I have this really beautiful friend, she's a relatively new Christian who's been through a lot a struggles and has a lot of questions. This friend recently asked me "since god made us new when we asked him into our lives does that mean he didn't like the old us?"
WOW
Is that a loaded question or what?
My first mental reaction to this was something like "really? Why did you ask me this question? I have to go find my bible and find all these references about how God loves us, and how he created us and how sin ruined us and put it all together and try and make her understand and make it all make sense cause its all vague and abstract in my head, and I'm kinda tired and urgh!!"
I love it when God teaches you something while you teach it to others, it's really humbling and beautiful and amazing all at the same time. So of course, God, being God had other plans for this conversation, instead of freaking out and typing some contrived "God loves you, blah blah blah" reply, God in all his awesomeness gave me this wonderful little illustration out of nowhere that I'm going to share with you.
Basically, we are God's masterpiece right, this is made clear several times in the bible, Genesis, Psalm 139, so many places point to just how wonderfully crafted we are in his image.
When I think of the word masterpiece, as most do I'm sure, immediately great works of art come to mind, The Mona Lisa, The Sistine Chapel etc.
We are like a beautiful painting God perfectly crafted and painstakingly painted by hand. So, to refer back to my friend's question is this the "old us"? Not quite, we'll call this the "original us" the back-in-the-garden version if you will. This is where the age old problem comes in: Sin entered the world. Isn't that what it always boils down to? No body wanted this to happen but it did.
That's right, God had a nice little cup of dirty paint water sitting next to his beautiful masterpiece, nothing out of the ordinary for a great artist, and he turned his back for two seconds (or maybe not at all, maybe Satan's that sneaky) and Satan creeps up and kicks this dirty murky water (sin, if you didn't catch that one) all over God's beautiful gorgeous masterpiece. What a jerk! I bet it was a really punky sort of kick to, I bet he scrunched up his face and clenched his fist and just dropkicked that cup as hard as he could.
So when we're "made new" it's really just God cleaning up all the messy dirty stains, a whole new careful, delicate, process. God doesn't mind at all though, he loves every single one of his masterpieces and wants them to be as beautiful as possible, as beautiful as he created them to be. He will spend our whole lives cleaning up our stains if we let him, and that's pretty awesome. :)
2 comments:
So, I randomly remembered seeing a facebook post of yours saying you updated your blog with a "deep" entry or something, so I decided to read it. It's kinda late now, so bear with my little spiel here, hopefully it'll make some sense...
I agree that God created us as His masterpieces, and I believe He loves us unconditionally whether we are Christians are not (Romans 5:8- "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.").
[side note: A certain phrase spoken at a certain weekly Christian event really bothered me. To say that "If you're not a Christian, your life is 100% random" is to completely sell God short. If that were true, absolutely NO ONE would ever come to God. How could they unless God orchestrated circumstances so that they would be able to find Him? end side note].
God created us knowing that we would be screwed up by sin. I think the only thing I sort of disagree with in your blog entry is the idea that Satan can somehow sneak up on God and mess up His plan. I believe that God is completely in control of His creation and the current state of the world is part of His plan to bring about the "restitution of all things" (Acts 3: "20And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."). All the crap that's going on in this world is going to work towards God's ultimate good eventually. God hasn't made any mistakes, nor has He allowed anyone (Satan) to screw up His grand work of art. He's still creating His masterpiece. An unfinished masterpiece may look like garbage to an ignorant onlooker who doesn't see the finished work in his mind, as the artist does. But when it's finished, it's going to be the most beautiful thing anyone can imagine, and I can't wait to see it :)
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